


the fire's out (but still it burns)

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 5x14 coda, Angst, But Mostly Angst ngl, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, angsty feelings toward fitz, torture mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 04:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14156676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: 5x14 Coda. Daisy deals with some of her tempestuous feelings about Fitz.





	the fire's out (but still it burns)

**Author's Note:**

> Please note I am not anti-Fitz and this is not intended to be an anti-Fitz fic. I know this storyline brings out a lot of strong feelings in people, it certainly has for me, but hateful comments will be deleted. I just wanted to give Daisy (and myself!) a space to experience some of the MYRIAD of feelings she must be feeling rn. With some bonus Mack feels! bc apparently I love dying and being dead.
> 
> title is from [Flares by the Script](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7jaXI6oXpQ) \- actually quite a powerful hurt/comfort song

“Mack, can you help?”

He gets up, moves towards the sound before he even really takes in what’s happening. Jemma’s voice is shaking, like a fence about to fall down, and Daisy is shaking just as badly, draped between the Doc and Deke and looking pale as death. 

“What the hell happened out there?” Mack wonders, taking Jemma’s place under Daisy’s arm and helping lower her to the bed. 

“F-Fitz,” Daisy replies. Her voice is shaking – with fear, with anger. The air around her shakes too. The tools in the tray Jemma brings. Mack’s heart begins to feel heavier as he takes in the horrendous, bloody bruise to the side of Daisy’s head. The rope-burn on her arms. The bloody gauze that Deke is holding to her neck. 

Mack’s stomach twists. He tries to imagine how Fitz could look at this, let alone carry it out, and the image won’t reconcile. A little angry spat, maybe, he could imagine. A slap, a punch, maybe even a black eye – after all, Fitz could be passionate, irrational at times, and Daisy never backed down from a fight. Mack had suspected that, should he snap one day, that might be how it would go. That would have been bad, very bad, terribly bad - but this isn’t just bad, it’s… gut-wrenchingly wrong. It’s hard to tie somebody down and cut them open in a fleeting moment of rage or frustration. This is something else entirely. Something pre-meditated. Something incomprehensible. 

“Fitz did this to you?” 

Daisy looks like she’s going to be sick. Over the other side of her shoulder, heart heavy and eyes brimming with tears, Jemma nods. 

“Damn,” Mack whispers. It’s the only word he can find. The unspeakable, confusing horror of it all is like a nightmare. 

A nightmare Daisy has just lived. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Are you going to be okay?” 

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Daisy hisses, but there are tears in her eyes, and fury competes with fear in her voice. Deke frowns doubtfully at the amount of the blood on the gauze at her neck, and he’s about to interrupt when she waves him off. “I mean it’s… It’ll heal. I’ll be fine.” 

“You need stitches, Daisy,” Jemma points out. 

The silence is tense as Jemma works. Daisy stares straight ahead at the wall, grinding her teeth, blinking back tears. She clutches Mack’s hand with a bone-crushing desperation, and Mack puts a hand over hers. He hopes it is comforting, despite his own nerves and uncertainty. Questions flood his mind – What happened? How, and why? - but the silence between Jemma and Daisy is too fragile to interrupt.

In the end, it’s Daisy who speaks first. 

“It wasn’t really him, right? Jemma? Tell me- tell me it wasn’t him.” 

Daisy holds her breath. Mack does too. The only sound is a pained sigh from Jemma, and the soft clink of metal as, task complete, she carefully lowers the tweezers and needle and steadies her hands on the tray.

When at last she replies, it’s like she has to drag the words over glass to make it out of her throat, and Mack’s not surprised. He’s a little impressed actually, by the way she maintains eye contact even though it feels like she’s reaching out and snapping the last strings of hope they have. 

“I’m afraid it was,” she clarifies. 

Daisy blinks at her. Reluctant. Disbelieving. 

Jemma continues, dropping eye contact at last in a battle to find the words and push through to the end of the sentence. “What happened, I think, was called a psychic split. It can happen sometimes when a person with- with schizophrenia under a large amount of pressure develops a- a- an alternate personality, sort of thing-“ 

“So I’m right then?” Daisy presses. “The Doctor, the alternate personality, it took him over. Right? So then it wasn’t him?” 

Jemma shakes her head. Tears are spilling down her cheeks now and the whole tray trembles violently in her hands. “It doesn’t work like that. It’s not like possession. The Doctor may have pushed Fitz to think from a perspective that he wouldn’t ordinarily, but… It was Fitz who made the decisions in the end. It was Fitz who– who-“

She chokes up, and Mack can’t blame her. The world is shifting around them, the whole place uncertain, and with the two people he’d bet good money on being closest to her in the world at the heart of this mess, Mack can’t imagine how twisted Jemma’s universe has become. A bullet in the leg, suddenly, is nothing. 

“I got this, Doc,” he insists gently. “Go.” 

Nodding frantically, Jemma shoves the tray back onto its cart and bolts from the room before she loses her last semblance of strength. Deke mumbles uncertainly and takes his leave after her, and with a heavy heart, Mack takes her seat by Daisy’s bedside.

Daisy props herself up on her arms, and her fingers clench the bedframe, even as Mack works as gently as he can to clean the wound on her head. 

“I knew it,” she growls. “I knew it was him. He didn’t sound insane. He looked like he- he didn’t want to. The Doctor would have liked it. He was- He was crying. He could _hear_ me. He _knew_ what he was doing. He knew.”

Anger cracks and crumbles in the face of fear again. It’s more than fear, it’s horror. It’s heartbreak. It’s violation. 

She sobs. Mack starts. He should have seen it coming but it feels like a gut punch out of nowhere. Never had he imagined – it was almost as unspeakable as the laws of the universe – that Fitz could have hurt Daisy so much, willingly or otherwise. 

“He knew,” she sobs, tears streaming down her face in a matter of seconds. Her body shakes with them. “He knew what it means to me, what it means to _us,_ and he still- How can I- How can I forgive him when he still-“ 

Mack puts the tweezers and gauze aside. This truly is a flesh wound; it can wait if it has to. It’s more important in this moment to wrap his arms around his friend. Hold her steady while the fabric of the world not only shifts, but tears beneath her feet. He’s not sure what she’s talking about, he’s not sure what Fitz did – not beyond the obvious anyway – but he’s sure that it must be something, that it must be bad, as Daisy howls and sobs in his embrace. There’s so much pain there, and anger, and grief, he starts to cry just listening to it. 

She howls and the windows shake, the wheels of the bed and the med cart squeak, bottles and supplies start to drop to the floor, and Mack feels a knot tighten in his gut. He hadn’t picked up on it before but he sees it now. He pieces it together – the blood on Daisy’s neck, the profound sense of intimate betrayal, and the fact that her quaking is back. Fitz must have removed her inhibitor. Tied her down and took her Inhumanity back by force. 

“Ah, Tremors,” he breathes, and it feels a bittersweet choice of nickname now. “Daisy. I got you, okay? You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

He murmurs sweet nothings and rubs her back, and it doesn’t do much to soothe the otherwordly lament of agony that’s pouring out of her, but he figures it can’t hurt either. He stays with her, holds her, until the trials of the day catch up with her and she falls into a restless sort of sleep. Then he quickly, carefully finishes cleaning her head wound and posts himself as watchman over her. He’ll move her bed to be beside Elena’s as soon as he gets the chance, but for now he sits back in the chair and turns it a little more toward the door. He holds the scalpel, lightly, in his fist, just in case they get an unwanted visitor. 

He wipes the tears from his cheeks. 

Apparently, you really never can tell.


End file.
